can defiler please see when seeds wear away even when people run away? we can with entropy I don't see the point in not doing it for seeds.

also **** delete raksha band or I literally will quit playing. It allows too much grief with no repercussions. And let me clarify, if I quit, I'll be quitting all IRE, I'm tired of spending money on a game/games where RL money trumps all and its okay for people with money to be griefy with no consequences. continue to milk your whales until they quit spending money because they don't have people to money stomp anymore

also **** delete raksha band or I literally will quit playing. It allows too much grief with no repercussions. And let me clarify, if I quit, I'll be quitting all IRE, I'm tired of spending money on a game/games where RL money trumps all and its okay for people with money to be griefy with no consequences. continue to milk your whales until they quit spending money because they don't have people to money stomp anymore

This is the kind of post that makes it worth spending $1000 on an artifact.

On an entirely unrelated note, I haven't played actively since 2012 and there's an extremely limited pool of active combatants. I'm given to understand that most of the heavy hitters have emigrated across to Achaea.

What are the key changes to the dynamics that I have possibly missed out on?

I am aware that there are promotional items that have been released called earrings which offer tangible speed improvements to the different curing balances. Can these be stacked, or are you restricted to one set at a time?

Paralysis has shifted to a two-part cure. Any other significant curing changes that I have missed?

Can autocuring be made to report on why it isn't attempting to cure certain afflictions? The biggest issue I have found with autocuring is that I can't see why it isn't doing what I expect it to do, whereas of old it was easier to identify a failing because you'd be able to visibly identify where your system had been thwarted. (e.g. IMTS).

It is apparently not a bug that RG & Shaman can use their fetish/totem whilst performing channeled activities like monolith capturing or removing bones from the boneyard, which provides a significant advantage for the defending player. Not quite sure I am able to understand why it works, because any command I attempt in performing the same actions disrupts the activity.

A lot of rust to shake off, so would be grateful for the input. Current meta seems to revolve around heavy affliction classes like Shaman with bountiful disruptions to impact on autocuring such as herb failure against a huge table of herb cure afflictions and confound which slows your herb balance for a significant time frame. I've also found the changes to RG quite difficult to overcome, as they also seem to be able to perform significant disruptions to healing and tattoos. Are their tricks to these changes that I have missed in my absence? I worked out that marks can be scrubbed off after many a painful duel - so I am sure that there are other things that I have missed.

On an entirely unrelated note, I haven't played actively since 2012 and there's an extremely limited pool of active combatants. I'm given to understand that most of the heavy hitters have emigrated across to Achaea.

What are the key changes to the dynamics that I have possibly missed out on?

Get a costume. Get some promo items. Combat is what you make of it these days. There's not a lot of 1v1 (there should be) and the team combat is pretty few and far between for now. You've seen the dynamic lately.

I am aware that there are promotional items that have been released called earrings which offer tangible speed improvements to the different curing balances. Can these be stacked, or are you restricted to one set at a time?

As Galt said, it's two earrings. Mix and match as you please. They modify a lot of things they really shouldn't, but that's why they're good. HELP EARRINGS.

Paralysis has shifted to a two-part cure. Any other significant curing changes that I have missed?

uhh, this one is tough to me because I'm honestly unsure myself. My understanding is no, numbness is the only radically changed aff. Stupidity got changed a little, it doesn't make you do dumb things anymore, just eats your commands.

Can autocuring be made to report on why it isn't attempting to cure certain afflictions? The biggest issue I have found with autocuring is that I can't see why it isn't doing what I expect it to do, whereas of old it was easier to identify a failing because you'd be able to visibly identify where your system had been thwarted. (e.g. IMTS).

Root word/command AUTOCURING should show you a list of commands you can use with this system. There's plenty of reporting options that will help you get this info overall reading a log. I have my affs received and affs cured on, for instance.

It is apparently not a bug that RG & Shaman can use their fetish/totem whilst performing channeled activities like monolith capturing or removing bones from the boneyard, which provides a significant advantage for the defending player. Not quite sure I am able to understand why it works, because any command I attempt in performing the same actions disrupts the activity.

We changed it one classlead season apparently and it just stuck. It's pretty cancerous and should be changed but it is a classlead change in the first place, which sets proper expectations for when and where we should be fixing it. Basically, we stopped making fetish and totem a channel itself, which means it can't be interrupted by normal means. Things like ranged entangles will take the shaman off fetish though.

A lot of rust to shake off, so would be grateful for the input. Current meta seems to revolve around heavy affliction classes like Shaman with bountiful disruptions to impact on autocuring such as herb failure against a huge table of herb cure afflictions and confound which slows your herb balance for a significant time frame. I've also found the changes to RG quite difficult to overcome, as they also seem to be able to perform significant disruptions to healing and tattoos. Are their tricks to these changes that I have missed in my absence? I worked out that marks can be scrubbed off after many a painful duel - so I am sure that there are other things that I have missed.

Marks can't be scrubbed in room with the Shaman and Shaman has a way to costlessly put them back up. As for the rest of your question, there aren't really any tricks. The classes in question are designed to have that cure hindering (nairat, failure, etc) so that they eventually make headway against the amount of curing methods an average player has. To be specific, Nairat/Loshre(?) flare does not care about method, only classification of aff, whereas Failure does not care about classification of aff, just method. In Failure's case, it is easier to just chew through those because the penalty is losing your cure balance and not curing anything. Those effects last longer than most curing balances do, meaning just turning off the method in Failure's case is an awful idea. In Nairat or Loshre's case, turning off one half of an affliction table is also asking for a lot of trouble. You would ideally want to identify Nairat being cast on you and direct all your physical aff curing through the fastest cure balance so you have the lowest net loss in curing overall - in your case, you could just MIGHT after the Nairat activates and it would eat that.. assuming it cures something. In way, you just let autocuring shove through these skills. They're setbacks that are largely on the 'white noise' side in terms of how interactive they are. The only interaction is on the offending side for those skills, as they have decisions on what tool to use. You merely suffer through those tools and try to make headway. I know that sounds kinda crappy, but the skills are designed to have impact without a vast amount of defender-side complexity.

On Confound, it adds a flat amount to your herb balance for .. give or take, 20 seconds. It's good for making the first bit of headway, but after you stick Impatience (and thus lock out a whole route of curing), Confound becomes a detriment to affs/sec. I have to utilize it against somebody like you for a few reasons, but that's all a play by ear thing.

Lot going on in this post. Answers in Bold.

Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a rightass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."

- Addiction is now the mvp of focus affs: makes them sip whatever is higher when attempting to drink an elixir. This essentially means you will be drinking mana when you want to drink health and health when you want to drink mana.

- Totems got made to not be a channel (yes, we classleaded that to change back, yes people only agree its an issue now that totems aren't circle locked.)

- There is a new aff I can never remember the name of that reduces agile sourced damage similar to weariness does physical.

- Avidya (ignorance) is no longer focusable and changed cures. It reduces magic damage similar to weariness does physical.

- Knights do bleeding stuff now (rg and dk are ok, just prioritise haemophilia vs templar and you're good. Brute force clot vs dk since you're artied and you should usually be fine too.)

- Wardancer became berserker, no more flick/dsb/sdrop, stacks affs into pierce now (see AB WARCHANTS PIERCE for relevant info).

- Relics exist, see help relics.

- Earrings exist, see help earrings.

- Jinx got added - this is a shaman only aff that is very dangerous. Essentially massively buffs their aff rate when its on you: you ideally need to cure this as soon as you can without opening yourself up to dying another way. Focusable.

- The rage ability got nerfed, no longer balanceless.

- Peace got nerfed, it doesn't block your attacks anymore.

- Dryblood exists, does damage if you clot when you have it. I can't remember if this is new or not but more classes have it now.

- Defilers basically hit you a bunch then randomly one shot you. It is meant to work that way, you're not doing it wrong.

- A bunch of outrider pet passives/surges got changed multiple times. Safe to assume they do not do what they used to for the most part.

- Hunters can no longer trigger some of the affs they could on release.

- Kaido immolate just blocks shielding/treeing now rather than all tattoo useage. Long live hammer tattoo.

- If memory serves, druid choke is no longer a writhe cure - its a timed one. Possible that never went in but I'm fairly sure it did.

- Check out sect rituals if you don't know what those are.

- Druids can use shields. (!)

- Malignist is completely different now.

- Ancestral stones unlock special custom races with some minor but useful bonuses. I forget the helpfile that covers them, but helpsearch ancestral will probably make it show up.

For changes in the last 11 months or so, I can't really help. But these are most of the big things that spring to mind over 2013-2016. I have likely missed a lot.

There was an issue recently that went the way I suspected it would, but didn't KNOW for sure that it would. No less than 3 veteran players were speculating on the likely result, and I definitely viewed it as an important test case. I am a little bit smarter after this case, and more sure I am thinking about things mostly correctly. But it's taken me over a decade to start to understand something every newbie should have zero questions about.

With that in mind, I can't stress enough. All players should know exactly how the PK rules really work in practice in any IRE they're playing - beyond the very clear cases of OOC harassment/racial slurs. When I consider an action, there should be no question in my mind about the potential consequences in game, and/or with admin. I realize the PK rules are "guidelines" but there are absolutely underlying procedures that I think build a lot of predictability into the system - but only if you truly understand the system. And the help files are almost a hindrance for the average player when it comes to truly grasping the rules.

There is a way to improve bounties I think. Allow the bountying org to specify by name(s) who can collect. This pretty much ends the problems with metagaming, and basically guarantees that the people most likely to be able to kill you against your will, will be the people trying to collect.